IBM and Intel teamed up with FM, AnandTech, DailyTech and Hot Hardware to launch IBM VirtualizationLittle Ashes download , a social-media platform for IT to define, explore and optimize processing virtualization. From one post:

“First dual-core in 2005, then quad-core in 2007: the multi-core snowball is rolling. The desktop market is still trying to find out how to wield all this power; meanwhile, the server market is eagerly awaiting the octal-cores in 2009. The difference is that the server market has a real killer application, hungry for all that CPU power: virtualization.”

An agency friend asked for my take on the recent dust-up over Motrin’s campaign targeting new moms. As I see it, Motrin made two blunders. One, old-fashioned bad creative in a post-Internet world. Two, when the campaign upset its customers, it demanded that those customers come to Motrin’s website to get their apology. Excerpts from my note below.

One:
The ad creative was careless. There’s no question that carrying a baby, or pushing a baby stroller, or going sleepless for weeks, can cause pain that lots of us parents take Motrin to alleviate. But by talking about slings as a trendy fashion accessory, they overlooked that many parents see slings as vital equipment for an approach to parenting that those parents take very seriously (see Attachment Parenting). We’d never talk about clothing-based religious practices as “fashion accessories.” I’d argue that to the attachment parenting community, calling slings “fashion” is an insult of similar magnitude. This was bad copy-writing, full stop.

I’m guessing no one worried too much about sloppy, perhaps insensitive copy-writing because it was a traditional ad buy. There was no “social media strategy,” so don’t worry about it. TV and print and standard banner ads are one-way, so who cares? The reality is: Social media happens to you whether or not you have a strategy. (I stole that line from Pete Spande.) If you have strategy, you are in the conversation and you prepare for the conversation. If you don’t have a strategy, your customers have the conversation without you, and when it goes in the wrong direction, you join the conversation late and defensively. Motrin landed in the latter situation.

Two:
When Motrin’s customers got pissed, they voiced their discontent on the social media platforms where they “live” online. Yet Motrin did not go “visit” those customers (ie, joining the Twitter conversation, right there on Twitter) to apologize. It required those angry customers to come to Motrin.com to get an apology. It should have syndicated the apology, published it on Twitter with @jessicagotleib and #motrinmoms, and published it as a comment on the most influential blogs that joined and accelerated the conversation.

“Three years ago, when John Battelle and Chas Edwards met with me for a cup of coffee across the street from the old Business 2.0 offices in downtown San Francisco, their company, Federated Media, was still in its infancy, and our company, Giga Omni Media, was little more than a dream.

“John, a long-time friend and a peer from the tech media world, asked me if I would sign on with his studio of talent and let them represent my then one-man effort, GigaOM.com, commercially. Naturally, I said yes. In the time that passed we had our ups and downs, successes and embarrassments. But we progressed and prospered together.

“…Federated Media has become more than just a studio for technology bloggers, but a leader in the conversational marketing movement.

“Progress is often accompanied by a divergence of ideas and ambitions within partnerships. At Giga Omni Media, we have been developing a network that revolves around niche verticals. As our needs became more specialized, we sat down with the folks at Federated to try and figure out how we could continue to work together. But both sides quickly realized that instead it was time to wrap up what has been a successful business relationship.”

“While this is not a significant monetary setback for Federated, it does point to what the John Battelle-founded online-ad company is giving up as it continues to scale: Its focus has been on large-scale national advertisers and creating both general and custom programs with them, as opposed to the more ‘intimate’ sells required for enterprise-focused vendors that GOM attracts. FM has a big-brand focus, for most part, and beyond its early start with tech sites, it has now moved into all kinds of other verticals like parenting, food, graphic arts, small business and others.”

Back in July, the American Dairy Council teamed up with the Pioneer Woman on dairy-based recipes. Perhaps you’ve stumbled across some of them if, like me, you’ve been searching the web for a chocolate milk recipe. The Pioneer Woman’s recipe is in the #4 position, out of the 585,000 results found by Google. Nice move, Dairy Council!

Today Boing Boing unveils a new site in the Boing Boing family, Offworld. Brandon and team promise to:

“focus on the overlooked, the underappreciated, the rise of the independents and, in general, the games that are bringing genuine excitement and innovation (in both gameplay and design) to the industry.”

“That’s not to say he believes P&G should end all involvement with Facebook. He cited Facebook applications as a potentially valuable vehicle for advertisers, one in which they can create an environment that’s favorable for their brands and consumers alike.”

AIG accepted (selectively at least) an invitation from Daily Kos to engage directly with its readers.

“On Tuesday, I posted a press release I’d received from AIG media relations rep Peter Tulupman in response to a post I’d written expressing outrage at the news of yet another expensive AIG retreat taken after the taxpayer bailout. In the Tuesday post, I invited Daily Kos readers to submit questions to Mr. Tulupman in the hopes that the desire he expressed on behalf of AIG to engage in dialogue with our community was geniune.”

To his credit, AIG’s Tulupman agreed to answer some of the questions.

There are hundreds of questions and comments, some that are very angry and some that are especially unflattering to AIG. At this point, though, AIG can’t be too worried about damaging its brand more than its been damaged by the evening news. And, meanwhile, I bet a small percentage of Daily Kos readers go deep into those comments, meaning (if I’m right) the bulk of the Daily Kos community will read the few questions AIG opts to answer — which aren’t going to be the most scathing — and will leave the experience with at least a small measure of new respect for AIG. Hey, they joined the fray.

Why does a brand need to be in so much trouble before its willing to jump into the mosh pit?